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Google alerts are a must-have for bloggers

// September 20th, 2007 // fun

I read about Google alerts briefly over at ProBlogger.net last week and I breezed over it as my Google Reader has become a bit overflooded with subscriptions. In fact, I’ve even deleted a bunch over the last month, but new ones always seem to make their way in. But I digress.

I saw it again today while I was browsing through Google’s seemingly infinite supply of tools and applications. I saw Alerts and remembered it, so I gave it a shot.

After having used it for only about six hours, I really feel it’s an invaluable tool, especially for us bloggers. I know a few of you who blog and some that may be getting into it down the road. So this is definitely something you might plan on using.

Basically, a Google Alert allows you to set up keyword searches that automatically run for you in that mysterious Google universe. You can choose what to search, like comprehensive, news, blogs or the web. I chose blogs since that’s who you interact with mostly online when you run a blog yourself. You can also choose the frequency in which you want to retrieve these alerts, and they come in your inbox.

I set up keywords for the following: suns, directv, battlestar galactica, blogging and arizona cardinals, hoping to see what I would get just throwing random, interesting words out there. I also blog on my sports site, so finding random Suns or Cardinals news helps with finding topics to write about.

In just under six hours, I got some pretty decent results. I found a blog about a Steve Nash interview that I hadn’t seen yet. I also discovered a movie called “Thousand Splendid Suns” coming out in 2009. So it’s not perfect, but I AM the one who gave them the word “suns”.

Even if you aren’t blogging, it’s kind of a cool way to find news on things. If you use a RSS Reader, you only get the new from the blogs you are subscribed to, not the entire blogging universe.

Give it a try if you want. The best way I’ve found to sign up for Google stuff, is off their “My Account” page, which isn’t the easiest place to get to. So bookmark that and you can get to any of your Google tools you want.

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